Your Visits: What are they Like?

SchmennaLeigh · #1 06-24-2006, 03:50 PM

What are your visits like? Formal? Unformal? Long? Short? At each others' homes? In a public place?

If you're visiting for awhile, what do you do? Do you spend a lot of time alone with your child or mainly as a group? Do you wish you had more or less time alone with your child?

I'm always looking for ideas for visits. We have two in August this year (not on purpose; it just worked that way). In November, they're coming for Nick's first birthday. And in December, we're headed back out for Munchkin's.

The last two, of course, are covered idea wise: birthday parties. For the August ones, the first one includes a trip to Columbus which involves me speaking on an adoption panel and meeting up with about 463097 other families at this point.

Possibly the zoo? The aquarium?

Advice. Ideas. Mishaps. Tell us about your visits.

mom2GRLC · #2 06-24-2006, 04:47 PM

Well, I'm an adoptive parent(through foster care) but I'll answer this one.

With my daughters birthfamily we have... gone to chuck-e-cheeses a few times, the zoo, Mc Donalds or some other fast food place. We've gone to walmart and had pictures done. They've come to a few of my daughters tap/ballet/gymnastic classes. Her ballet recital. I've brought her bmom on base with us to show her some of her favorite places, our old house(where her bdaughter had spent 2 years with us while in fostercare), we showed her where my husband used to work(and she got to go check out a few planes and walk around inside them). We've been to the bgrandma's house on Christmas eve this last year. We've met the bgrandma a few times out to lunch, and at their class at the library and at this grocery store where she works.

I know her birthmom's dream would be to have her for a few hours or a night or a weekend all to herself. But that just can't happen in our situation. The closest thing we have felt comfortable allowing her to do is letting them go off together in chuck-e-cheese and playing out of our sight/hearing, but even that was a HUGE step for me. Then the very next week she completely screwed up by forgetting about visits, coming late or not even coming at all (on purpose...without even calling to cancel or apologize). So unfortunately we will probably never have visits that are unsupervised.

Don't get me wrong she has plenty of alone time with her because in general I usally do step back and give them lots of space to talk and play together. But alone time for us doesn't mean completely alone.

mom2GRLC · #3 06-24-2006, 04:59 PM

Activities I'd recommend you do is somehting that keeps you all busy. Your munckin is likely at an age where sitting around just won't be very much fun. If you can do something active together it would probably be a lot of fun. You can try the zoo, seaworld, amusement park, visiting a petting zoo/farm, a water park, the local pool, indoor fun zones (like "pump it up" with lots of big blow up slides and jumping cages and stuff), family fun center, a kids museum, science museum, ice skating, roller skating, go fishing, hiking, camping, go to the mall (and play in build-a-bear workshop). Maybe go see a kid movie(perfect place to hold her on your lap and snuggle her). Chuck-e-cheese, mc donalds or somewhere with a play zone. If you like books you can go to Barnes and Noble. The usually have a little cafe and play area for the kids, ours even has a little stage and lots of toys, then you guys could be pickign out a bunch of books and sitting on the couches and reading them. You can find out if there are any local kid play groups in the area and maybe make it to one of those. I don't know there is a bunch of things you can go out and do, many of them won't cost you an arm and a leg either.

I'm sure I could think of a million other things to do...but I'll stop for now.

mom2GRLC · #4 06-24-2006, 05:20 PM

As far as length of visits. Well they've been as short as 30 minutes and as long as pretty much all day depending on what we were doing. I understand trying to get as much time together as possible(say if the person were visiting from out of state), but for us it has just seemed like shorter visits more frequently have worked out better. Partly because we do have a lot of youg kids involved who get tried and grumpy and our visits have usually been filled with a lot of underlying emotion to deal with.

But truthfully in my heart I do wish we could see each other more and our relationship could be better and we could get passed a lot of the emotional difficulties we all have. I think were getting to that point it's just taken some time. But I've always heard the first year or first couple years are the hardest. So I'm hoping for things to start becoming much easier.....(crossing my fingers)!!!

bromanchik · #5 06-25-2006, 05:47 AM

We always had week-end visits, generally 4X a year. We would arrive after dinner on Friday, spend all day Saturday and leave after lunch on Sunday. This gave us all plenty of down time together, not all of it focusing on the child. We talked about movies, books, politics. We discussed religion. Since Matt's been in college we've had less of these visits, and I miss them terribly. I think it is what allowed us to become friends.

Free_to_be_me · #6 06-25-2006, 09:41 AM

I have had quite a few weekend visits-some three day, some four day. Usually we just spend a lot of time hanging around the house. I spend the majority of my time with my birthdaughter, but also find time to hang out with her parents. Every once in a while, during these visits, I will take both girls (my birthdaughter and her little sister) swimming or to the park or on some activity while their parents are working or at the gym or doing something.

My favorite part of these visits has always been getting ready for bed. We usually would sleep in the same room and just talk and tell stories. This time is when we really got close. This is also when the hard questions came up and I found out what she worries about. I think I've been able to relieve some of those worries.

lahdh4 · #7 06-25-2006, 01:26 PM

Hard to really say. The first one was just us at a mutual spot and it was for a few hours. The second was at the agency picnic. The third was at their house and I would have loved to stay longer and this last one was very short. Way too short for my liking. I would like some more one on one with just me and J. I just find them extremely difficult to deal with.

HBV · #8 06-26-2006, 08:49 AM

When it's just H's birthmom, I pick her up and we go for coffee or for lunch---once to get manicures, which she loved. When it's her whole family, we meet for lunch out or sometimes at a park for a walk (and lots of photo taking.) Occasionally they come to our house, but to be perfectly frank I don't like that as much because her dad is one of those people who doesn't seem to know when to leave. I kind of prefer activities with some natural end to them when her folks are along. Bdad we usually do just a meal out---he is always really happy to get a free meal.

***taramayrn*** · #9 06-26-2006, 11:24 AM

Informal, relaxed, at each other's home, visiting, eating, playing, going to amusement parks, etc. Just spending relaxing time with each other.

m-mom · #10 07-01-2006, 10:01 PM

Lately i've tried to change our visiting rountine. I invited them to come to my house, which has only happened once in 8 years, and there supossed to come in later summer. Last time rather than staying at their house the whole time we all went to the arcade, and the time before that we went to his basketball game.

They are very good about giving us privacy. They actually suggest to him, " Why don't you two go the park" I'm so thankful for that! It's been in those alone times that he lets is gaurd down and starts asking me questions about the adoption.

As far as ideas, what works for me is buying stuff to play with at the visit. A new game, learning flash cards, toys, books. It gets him so excited and it entertains while your there. Our few public outings together seemed less intimate than just playing together on the living room floor.
Oh yes, and I usually spend the whole day there. From about 10:30 to 4-5. Once i did a quick stop by because i was in the area and i could tell he didn't like that. He kept saying, "you're leaving already"

patti Daniels · #11 07-01-2006, 10:27 PM

I am an adoptive mother. My daughter and I flew to the state where the bmom lived. I left my daughter with the bmom and her half brother and sister for five days. I took a cruise and a train trip during this time. The bmom did travel to see our daughter graduate. We have had picnics with the grandparents and went out to eat several times with the grandparents. The visits have been positive and my daughter has enjoyed them.

AMom2Two · #12 07-02-2006, 06:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by m-mom

They are very good about giving us privacy. They actually suggest to him, " Why don't you two go the park" I'm so thankful for that! It's been in those alone times that he lets is gaurd down and starts asking me questions about the adoption.

(((m-mom)) Thank you for sharing with us. While my children are still young, I do think I need to encourage some one on one time, just between their bmothers and them. With you sharing this, and my dd just starting to ask questions, I think more one on one time with her bmom might allow her to be comfortable to ask her some questions. I will definitity adjust our visits so that they (bmom and dd) will spend some quality time together without dh, myself and ds around.

Thank you again for sharing!

SchmennaLeigh · #13 07-02-2006, 12:41 PM

I agree with Amom; thank you for sharing that part. Sometimes, as the Munchkin is still rather young, I'm scared to spend too much alone time with her. She's never been weird with me but I always fear the worst reaction, of course! As I know what she likes to do, I just need to plan on doing some of those things with her one-on-one for our next visit.

Thanks for that!

m-mom · #14 07-03-2006, 10:20 AM

Your welcome! I have had some shocking questions come my way. Like, "why don't I live with you" and i am so happy he could hear from me about he adoption as well as his parents.
Good luck to both of you on increasesing the one-one-one time!

baby1995 · #15 07-04-2006, 01:18 AM

i meet my daughter when she was 6. twice that year and once a year after that, she lives in europe now. the visits have been emotionally and phsically straining on me and my family. everyone is always crying and sad when she leaves. my daughter enjoys her visits at least i think she does. my sister has a son the same age and they get along very well and we spend the day together. her parents are usually there ice skating, park, swimming. last year her mom let us spend the day together by ourselves she's 11 now. and when she departed i wasn't my usually upset self but my mom and sister were i think it's going to be ok. last year i had a baby girl who is going to be one on the 14th and they will be meeting for the first time in less than two weeks. it is a very exciting time for my family and the anticipation is builing up.

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